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The Robert Mueller Investigation


Hugo Stiglitz

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They really were armed to the teeth. They were so close to taking America down while they took selfies.  

They really were armed to the teeth. They were so close to taking America down while they took selfies.  

If any of us threatened to “take selfies” of Sack like this on this board:

d6007b4556bb0d5e6dcbbac64291fb53.jpg

….we’d be taking a significant post of vacation.

So, just look at that and remember what lies Trumpkins like sack are. It’s not what they do. It’s what they are.
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16 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

 


If any of us threatened to “take selfies” of Sack like this on this board:

d6007b4556bb0d5e6dcbbac64291fb53.jpg

….we’d be taking a significant post of vacation.

So, just look at that and remember what lies Trumpkins like sack are. It’s not what they do. It’s what they are.

 

That looks like legitimate political discourse to me. 

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1 hour ago, Johnny Sack said:

They did?  I could have sworn they had flying bombs with thousands of pounds of jet fuel.

OMG. 
 

Sack finally sees cause and effect. 
 

It’s a miracle he is starting to open his eyes. 
 

Ok we all know that is a lie. 

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I mean, people died. Cops committed suicide in the days and weeks after. And it's nothing short of a miracle that more people didn't die. 

(eye roll, shrug) "Pfff, 'capitol attack'. Whatever. There weren't even that many guns and not that many bombs and only one gallows constructed to murder the VP if they found him. Big deal."

 

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8 minutes ago, Red Five said:

I mean, people died. Cops committed suicide in the days and weeks after. And it's nothing short of a miracle that more people didn't die. 

(eye roll, shrug) "Pfff, 'capitol attack'. Whatever. There weren't even that many guns and not that many bombs and only one gallows constructed to murder the VP if they found him. Big deal."

 

never mind shit and piss covered floors and walls. you know, the things that normal tourists do. I remember fondly grunting one out in the middle of the Pantheon. someone even high-fived me and told me I'm the best tourist they have ever seen. Very touristy.

give me a fucking break.

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7 minutes ago, Red Five said:

I mean, people died. Cops committed suicide in the days and weeks after. And it's nothing short of a miracle that more people didn't die. 

(eye roll, shrug) "Pfff, 'capitol attack'. Whatever. There weren't even that many guns and not that many bombs and only one gallows constructed to murder the VP if they found him. Big deal."

 

Well, Capital police did have to divert the discoursers so that Congresspeeps could escape.  Every Republican's talking points and defense of Jan 6th/Trump Day or really anything:

south park poop GIF

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Back to the Durham thing.

This latest filing repeats, in less than a paragraph, what is detailed in Sussman's indictment.  It's not new at all.  It's a mere summary rehash.

What's interesting though is that Sussman's indictment is 27 pages long to allege a single count of lying to the FBI.

For perspective, the Manafort indictment was 31 pages long to allege 12 counts of relatively complex financial crimes.

When it takes that long to explain a relatively simple crime, the prosecution may have problems.

Also interesting is that, if the work on the DNS server data was so unlawful, why have none of the actual actors there been charged under the CFAA?  It may constitute "spying" in the broadest sense, like you can spy on who comes and goes from a house or a place of business, but it does not appear to be unlawful.

At least one "end" of a DNS server is, by necessity, public and open to sniffing or observation.

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1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:
Back to the Durham thing.
This latest filing repeats, in less than a paragraph, what is detailed in Sussman's indictment.  It's not new at all.  It's a mere summary rehash.
What's interesting though is that Sussman's indictment is 27 pages long to allege a single count of lying to the FBI.
For perspective, the Manafort indictment was 31 pages long to allege 12 counts of relatively complex financial crimes.
When it takes that long to explain a relatively simple crime, the prosecution may have problems.
Also interesting is that, if the work on the DNS server data was so unlawful, why have none of the actual actors there been charged under the CFAA?  It may constitute "spying" in the broadest sense, like you can spy on who comes and goes from a house or a place of business, but it does not appear to be unlawful.
At least one "end" of a DNS server is, by necessity, public and open to sniffing or observation.


This is a good read if you hadn’t seen it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/us/politics/durham-sussmann-trump-russia.html?referringSource=articleShare

 

Spoiler

WASHINGTON — When John H. Durham, the Trump-era special counsel investigating the inquiry into Russia’s 2016 election interference, filed a pretrial motion on Friday night, he slipped in a few extra sentences that set off a furor among right-wing outlets about purported spying on former President Donald J. Trump.

But the entire narrative appeared to be mostly wrong or old news — the latest example of the challenge created by a barrage of similar conspiracy theories from Mr. Trump and his allies.

Upon close inspection, these narratives are often based on a misleading presentation of the facts or outright misinformation. They also tend to involve dense and obscure issues, so dissecting them requires asking readers to expend significant mental energy and time — raising the question of whether news outlets should even cover such claims. Yet Trump allies portray the news media as engaged in a cover-up if they don’t.

The latest example began with the motion Mr. Durham filed in a case he has brought against Michael A. Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer with links to the Democratic Party. The prosecutor has accused Mr. Sussmann of lying during a September 2016 meeting with an F.B.I. official about Mr. Trump’s possible links to Russia.

 

The filing was ostensibly about potential conflicts of interest. But it also recounted a meeting at which Mr. Sussmann had presented other suspicions to the government. In February 2017, Mr. Sussmann told the C.I.A. about odd internet data suggesting that someone using a Russian-made smartphone may have been connecting to networks at Trump Tower and the White House, among other places.

Mr. Sussmann had obtained that information from a client, a technology executive named Rodney Joffe. Another paragraph in the court filing said that Mr. Joffe’s company, Neustar, had helped maintain internet-related servers for the White House, and that he and his associates “exploited this arrangement” by mining certain records to gather derogatory information about Mr. Trump.

Citing this filing, Fox News inaccurately declared that Mr. Durham had said he had evidence that Hillary Clinton’s campaign had paid a technology company to “infiltrate” a White House server. The Washington Examiner claimed that this all meant there had been spying on Mr. Trump’s White House office. And when mainstream publications held back, Mr. Trump and his allies began shaming the news media.

“The press refuses to even mention the major crime that took place,” Mr. Trump said in a statement on Monday. “This in itself is a scandal, the fact that a story so big, so powerful and so important for the future of our nation is getting zero coverage from LameStream, is being talked about all over the world.”

There were many problems with all this. For one, much of this was not new: The New York Times had reported in October what Mr. Sussmann had told the C.I.A. about data suggesting that Russian-made smartphones, called YotaPhones, had been connecting to networks at Trump Tower and the White House, among other places.

 

The conservative media also skewed what the filing said. For example, Mr. Durham’s filing never used the word “infiltrate.” And it never claimed that Mr. Joffe’s company was being paid by the Clinton campaign.

Most important, contrary to the reporting, the filing never said the White House data that came under scrutiny was from the Trump era. According to lawyers for David Dagon, a Georgia Institute of Technology data scientist who helped develop the Yota analysis, the data — so-called DNS logs, which are records of when computers or smartphones have prepared to communicate with servers over the internet — came from Barack Obama’s presidency.

 
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“What Trump and some news outlets are saying is wrong,” said Jody Westby and Mark Rasch, both lawyers for Mr. Dagon. “The cybersecurity researchers were investigating malware in the White House, not spying on the Trump campaign, and to our knowledge all of the data they used was nonprivate DNS data from before Trump took office.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for Mr. Joffe said that “contrary to the allegations in this recent filing,” he was apolitical, did not work for any political party, and had lawful access under a contract to work with others to analyze DNS data — including from the White House — for the purpose of hunting for security breaches or threats.

After Russians hacked networks for the White House and Democrats in 2015 and 2016, it went on, the cybersecurity researchers were “deeply concerned” to find data suggesting Russian-made YotaPhones were in proximity to the Trump campaign and the White House, so “prepared a report of their findings, which was subsequently shared with the C.I.A.”

A spokesman for Mr. Durham declined to comment.

Mr. Durham was assigned by the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, to scour the Russia investigation for wrongdoing in May 2019 as Mr. Trump escalated his claims that he was the victim of a “deep state” conspiracy. But after nearly three years, he has not developed any cases against high-level government officials.

Instead, Mr. Durham has developed two cases against people associated with outside efforts to understand Russia’s election interference that put forward unproven, and sometimes thin or subsequently disproved, suspicions about purported links to Mr. Trump or his campaign.

 

Both cases are narrow — accusations of making false statements. One of those cases is against Mr. Sussmann, whom Mr. Durham has accused of lying during a September 2016 meeting with an F.B.I. official about Mr. Trump’s possible links to Russia.

(Mr. Durham says Mr. Sussmann falsely said he had no clients, but was there on behalf of both the Clinton campaign and Mr. Joffe. Mr. Sussman denies ever saying that, while maintaining he was only there on behalf of Mr. Joffe — not the campaign.)

Both Mr. Sussmann’s September 2016 meeting with the F.B.I. and the February 2017 meeting with the C.I.A. centered upon suspicions developed by cybersecurity researchers who specialize in sifting DNS data in search of hacking, botnets and other threats.

A military research organization had asked Georgia Tech researchers to help scrutinize a 2015 Russian malware attack on the White House’s network. After it emerged that Russia had hacked Democrats, they began hunting for signs of other Russian activity targeting people or organizations related to the election, using data provided by Neustar.

Mr. Sussmann’s meeting with the F.B.I. involved odd data the researchers said might indicate communications between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, a Kremlin-linked institution. The F.B.I. dismissed suspicions of a secret communications channel as unfounded. In the indictment of Mr. Sussmann, Mr. Durham insinuated that the researchers did not believe what they were saying. But lawyers for the researchers said that was false and that their clients believed their analysis.

The meeting with the C.I.A. involved odd data the researchers said indicated there had been communications with Yota servers in Russia coming from networks serving the White House; Trump Tower; Mr. Trump’s Central Park West apartment building; and Spectrum Health, a Michigan hospital company that also played a role in the Alfa Bank matter. The researchers also collaborated on that issue, according to Ms. Westby and Mr. Rasch, and Mr. Dagon had prepared a “white paper” explaining the analysis, which Mr. Sussmann later took to the C.I.A.

Mr. Durham’s filing also cast doubt on the researchers’ suggestion that interactions between devices in the United States and Yota servers were inherently suspicious, saying that there were more than three million such DNS logs from 2014 to 2017 — and that such logs from the White House dated back at least that long.

 

But Ms. Westby and Mr. Rasch reiterated that YotaPhones are extremely rare in the United States and portrayed three million DNS logs over three years as “paltry and small relative to the billions and billions” of logs associated with common devices like iPhones.

“Yota lookups are extremely concerning if they emanate from sensitive networks that require protection, such as government networks or people running for federal office,” they said.

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Sussman's response to Durham's latest.

Quote

In his Motion, the Special Counsel included approximately three pages of purported “Factual Background.” See Dkt. No. 35 at 2–5. Approximately half of this Factual Background provocatively—and misleadingly1—describes for the first time Domain Name System (“DNS”) traffic potentially associated with former President Donald Trump, including data at the Executive Office of the President (“EOP”), that was allegedly presented to Agency-2 in February 2017. See
id. at 3–4. These allegations were not included in the Indictment; these allegations post-date the single false statement that was charged in the Indictment; and these allegations were not necessary to identify any of the potential conflicts of interest with which the Motion is putatively concerned. Why then include them? The question answers itself.

1   For example, although the Special Counsel implies that in Mr. Sussmann’s February 9, 2017 meeting, he provided Agency-2 with EOP data from after Mr. Trump took office, the Special Counsel is well aware that the data provided to Agency-2 pertained only to the period of time before Mr. Trump took office, when Barack Obama was President. Further—and contrary to the Special Counsel’s alleged theory that Mr. Sussmann was acting in concert with the Clinton Campaign—the Motion conveniently overlooks the fact that Mr. Sussmann’s meeting with Agency-2 happened well after the 2016 presidential election, at a time when the Clinton Campaign had effectively ceased to exist. Unsurprisingly, the Motion also omits any mention of the fact that Mr. Sussmann never billed the Clinton Campaign for the work associated with the February 9, 2017 meeting, nor could he have (because there was no Clinton Campaign). See Dkt. No. 35 at 3- 4. And the Special Counsel persists in alleging that Mr. Sussmann billed the Clinton Campaign for his meeting with the FBI in September 2016, when that is false as well.

Quote

To make this case a partisan affair and to inflame media coverage, the Special Counsel chose to include allegations that Mr. Sussmann was part of a wide-ranging scheme involving a number of uncharged parties including the Clinton Campaign, Law Firm-1, Campaign Lawyer-1, a U.S. Investigative Firm, Tech-Executive-1, and a number of computer data researchers who all worked together to unfairly influence the 2016 election. In so doing, the Special Counsel featured grossly misleading excerpts of emails among Tech-Executive-1 and other researchers, omitting statements that showed the researchers agreed with the findings and otherwise operated in good faith. See, e.g., Dkt. No. 1 ¶¶ 23, 24. Tellingly, however, the Special Counsel has never alleged in the Indictment or subsequently that the data provided by the researchers was manipulated or fabricated, or that Mr. Sussmann had any reason to believe that
the allegations he presented to the FBI’s General Counsel were untrue or misleading in any way.

Quote

More recently, in his 19-page “Discovery Update” filed on January 25, 2022, the Special Counsel again went out of his way to include uncharged and inflammatory allegations. In his filing, which sought an extension of time to produce certain discovery, the Special Counsel stretched to include the gratuitous claim that his Office had an “active, ongoing criminal investigation of the defendant’s conduct and other matters.” Dkt. No. 33 ¶ 1. However, the Special Counsel has been investigating for years, and some of the Special Counsel’s “ongoing” investigation seems to be work that should have been completed before indicting Mr. Sussmann. For example, the Special Counsel has alleged that Mr. Sussmann met with the FBI on behalf of the Clinton Campaign, but it was not until November 2021—two months after Mr. Sussmann was indicted—that the Special Counsel bothered to interview any individual who worked full-time for that Campaign to determine if that allegation was true. It is not.

I love that Ana keeps hanging his hat on this clown show. They're going to nail Hillary to the wall for being a criminal mastermind any day now!

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19 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Ana keeps hanging his hat on this clown show.

I actually don't think that the Durham stuff really goes anywhere meaningful. 

Most of my views about what took place in terms of the intersection of the political apparatus with all of this stuff was formulated based on reading the wide range of on the record testimony of the various individuals involved.  Beyond some of the tangents re: WH DNS data from the transition period in Durham's filling, all the key points regarding spreading the alfa server conspiracy and the Steele dossier were already out in public for those inclined to connecting the dots. The fact that Sussman peddled the alfa conspiracy to the FBI and CIA and multiple reporters was previously known, so nothing particularly novel or groundbreaking here.  The role of various parties in concocting the alfa narrative, likewise.  Maybe some additional detail there in Durham's filling, but nothing really pivotal. We know that Steele peddled the same information to State department contacts.  The play is pretty obvious. Haven't seen Durham really bring anything groundbreaking to table, beyond ringing up the lawyer and issuing a bunch of subpoenas.  

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On 2/13/2022 at 4:10 PM, Anastasis said:

You are gonna argue the alfa bank conspiracy story was not a disinformation operation run by DNC operatives?

LOL, go for it wildcat.  

Honestly, you may be more disingenuous than Johnny Sack pretending he doesn't hate black people.  This wasn't even 48 hours ago. You've been suggesting for fucking years now that Hillary, her campaign, and/or the DNC manufactured the DNS/Alfa bank story out of whole cloth to get the FBI to announce an investigation into Trump in hopes that it would help sway the election. 

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58 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

I mean do you disagree with the assertion the alfa bank conspiracy nonsense was a disinformation operation run out by DNC operatives?  

Yes. What happened is simple. A bunch of cybersecurity people were monitoring both campaigns, the White House, Congress, etc. for signs of foreign hacking, and one saw some suspicious DNS activity they thought warranted further investigation. It's that simple. You've misunderstood and/or misrepresented virtually everything remotely related to this matter to fit your conspiracy theory that Bill Barr thought was too absurd to investigate seriously. Meanwhile, you continue to downplay the support that Trump actually solicited and received from the Russian government. But sure, keep fucking this horse. When you're lying on your deathbed years from now you'll probably be dreaming of seeing Hillary locked up and all she was ever actually doing was being a shitty politician, losing elections and sharing recipes.

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1 hour ago, wildcat09 said:

Sussman's response to Durham's latest.

I love that Ana keeps hanging his hat on this clown show. They're going to nail Hillary to the wall for being a criminal mastermind any day now!

I agree that what's there in recent filings seems completely superfluous.  And that gives me doubts about Durham.

But, it wouldn't be the first time the feds put inflammatory and irrelevant allegations in their pleadings in far less political cases.

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12 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

I agree that what's there in recent filings seems completely superfluous.  And that gives me doubts about Durham.

But, it wouldn't be the first time the feds put inflammatory and irrelevant allegations in their pleadings in far less political cases.

It's probably fairly unusual for those inflammatory and irrelevant allegations to also be obviously misleading, though. This whole investigation reeks of the same methods the right used to pretend that the Uranium One scandal was a serious matter.

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7 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

It's probably fairly unusual for those inflammatory and irrelevant allegations to also be obviously misleading, though. This whole investigation reeks of the same methods the right used to pretend that the Uranium One scandal was a serious matter.

Plus, Obama shipped pallets of cash to the Iranians.

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4 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

Yes. What happened is simple. A bunch of cybersecurity people were monitoring both campaigns, the White House, Congress, etc. for signs of foreign hacking, and one saw some suspicious DNS activity they thought warranted further investigation. It's that simple.

What's pretty obvious to me is that a group of people created a specious narrative that a set of data suggest a nefarious communication back channel between Russia and the Trump Campaign.  Durham's indictment suggests that there was a specific tasking and motive. Maybe that shakes out, may be it doesn't.  Either way, that narrative was false, but it was packaged up and delivered to the FBI general counsel. The time involved in both packaging it up in white papers and doing the actual delivery was billed to the DNC/Clinton campaign. Separately the material was spread about by Fusion and Steele, noted purveyors of disinformation also funded by the DNC, to various government officials and journalists. Separately still, the material was shopped by Sussman to media outlets yielding stories in slate, etc.  The articles made reference to, among other things, the fact that the FBI was investigating these allegations to bring to them an air of credibility. They were in fact investigating them because some of the same people sowing seeds with the reporters were sowing seeds at the FBI. The confluence of these actions gave cover to the campaign to run with tweets stoking the alfa bank conspiracy narrative as the "key to unlocking the mystery of Trump's ties to Russia" in the days prior to the election.

I mean, it does all seem pretty simple and obvious. 

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41 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

What's pretty obvious to me is that a group of people created a specious narrative that a set of data suggest a nefarious communication back channel between Russia and the Trump Campaign.  Durham's indictment suggests that there was a specific tasking and motive. Maybe that shakes out, may be it doesn't.  Either way, that narrative was false, but it was packaged up and delivered to the FBI general counsel. The time involved in both packaging it up in white papers and doing the actual delivery was billed to the DNC/Clinton campaign. Separately the material was spread about by Fusion and Steele, noted purveyors of disinformation also funded by the DNC, to various government officials and journalists. Separately still, the material was shopped by Sussman to media outlets yielding stories in slate, etc.  The articles made reference to, among other things, the fact that the FBI was investigating these allegations to bring to them an air of credibility. They were in fact investigating them because some of the same people sowing seeds with the reporters were sowing seeds at the FBI. The confluence of these actions gave cover to the campaign to run with tweets stoking the alfa bank conspiracy narrative as the "key to unlocking the mystery of Trump's ties to Russia" in the days prior to the election.

I mean, it does all seem pretty simple and obvious. 

It's oppo research.  It's not laudable, but it's kind of par for the course.

And of course Trump was open to this particular kind because the Russians are balls deep in his ass.

What it isn't is hacking, or theft, or really even spying.

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"In a filing on Thursday, Mr. Durham defended himself, saying those accusations about his intentions were “simply not true.” He said he had “valid and straightforward reasons” for including the information in the Feb. 11 filing that set off the firestorm, while disavowing responsibility for how certain news outlets had interpreted and portrayed it."

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/us/politics/durham-right-wing-media-trump.html#amp_tf=From %1%24s&aoh=16452169490257&csi=0&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2022%2F02%2F17%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Fdurham-right-wing-media-trump.html

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Well, as one would have it:

Special Counsel John H. Durham is pushing back against Fox News' reports suggesting former President Donald Trump was preoccupied with conspiracy theories and spying on staff members.

According to The New York Times, Fox News' reporting explained details about Durham's motion which suggested former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign was secretly surveilling the Trump White House servers. But now, however, Durham actually refuted those reports, himself. 
 

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/durham/

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  • 1 month later...
32 minutes ago, Irwin F Fletcher said:

Trump always needs a "boogey man" to run against. It will be sweet poetic justice to watch this case backfire in real time leading up to 2024.

yeah, I don't get this one. doesn't this open him up to a shitload of discovery that he probably doesn't want?

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  • 4 weeks later...

Since the mainstream media reported every time robert Mueller took a shit for 2 years, I certainly expect tonight's news to lead with this - more evidence that it was all a hoax and all fake news.

It was always a hoax and it was always fake news.

 

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